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13 Jan 2015

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on Tuesday said that it did not budget or expend N152 billion as recently claimed in certain political quarters for the rehabilitation of its four refineries located in Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt.

NNPC, in statement from its Group General Manager, Public Affairs, Ohi Alegbe, in Abuja, asked political gladiators in the country to exempt it and its operation from their political brick-bats, in their desperation for votes in the forthcoming general elections.

Describing as inaccurate claims that it expended N152 billion in the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of its refineries, the corporation frowned on such deliberate distortion of facts and figures about its operations by “desperate vote-seeking politicians intent on gaining partisan advantage by hook or by crook.”

It noted that as a public entity with fiduciary responsibility to the government and people of Nigeria, it will remain focused on its mandate rather than to be distracted by the spate of politically inspired attacks on its operations.

The corporation specifically described as fiction the recent report of N152 billion supposedly spent on the repair of refineries credited to some nondescript civil society organisations, and stated that the organisation was driven by an overheated imagination.

“Though a decision was taken in 2011 to rehabilitate all refineries using the Original Refinery Builder (ORB) of each of the refineries, the corporation made a recourse to a new strategy after the ORBs declined participation and nominated some partners in their stead who came up with outrageously unfavorable terms,” the statement said.

It added that: “The nominated partners, as sole bidders came up with humongous price offers after two years of thorough and exhaustive scope of work definition and price negotiations. The proxies were also unwilling to provide post rehabilitation performance guarantees.”

NNPC said that as an alternative, a new arrangement which kicked off in October, 2014 and entails phased and simultaneous rehabilitation of all refineries using in-house and locally available resources in line with the spirit and letters of the Nigerian content law was initiated by it.